The Future of Family Medicine - Building a Welcoming Health Care Home

In 2002, representatives from seven national family medicine organizations, with the American Academy of Family Physicians in the lead, began a two-year study on the future of family medicine to determine what people want and expect from their primary doctors and how to make needed improvements in education and practice delivery.

Key Findings

The project leadership committee reported their findings in an article in Annals of Family Medicine. Among them were these highlights:

Family physicians are not well recognized by the public for what they are and what they do.

Patients want their primary care physician to meet these five basic criteria:

To be in their insurance plan.

To be in a convenient location.

To be able to schedule an appointment within a reasonable period of time.

To have good communication skills.

To have a reasonable amount of experience in practice.

Beyond the basic criteria, patients value the relationship with their physician above all else, including service.

Key Recommendations

The study, as reported in the Annals of Family Medicine, contains many recommendations, a few of which follow:

Family physicians will redesign their work and workplaces to foster a new model of care based on the concept of a relationship-centered personal medical home that serves as the focal point for all individuals to receive health care.

Family physicians will implement electronic health records to enhance and integrate communication, diagnosis and treatment and measurement of processes and results, as examples.

Family medicine will oversee the training of family physicians to include training in maternity care, the care of hospitalized patients, community and population health and culturally effective and proficient care.

Practice-based research will be integrated into the values, structures and processes of family medicine practices.

Family physician groups will develop strategies to promote awareness and understanding of the new model of family medicine and the concept of the personal medical home.

Recommended

Get informed: Receive the latest news, research, and funding opportunities from RWJF each week.

Funding Alerts

Get funded by RWJF: Receive notifications when new funding opportunities are released.

Other Communications

In addition to any other subscriptions you choose, we will send you other announcements, news, and opportunities that we think might be of interest to you. If you have indicated that you are an EU resident,
we will send these communications to you only if you choose to receive them by checking this box.

You are free to change your mind and to stop receiving emails from us by contacting us at
privacy@rwjf.org
or by clicking on the Manage your Subscriptions link to unsubscribe in the footer of any email we send you.